Germany's "Invest in Germany Summit": A New Pitch for International Capital

On 19 and 20 October 2026, the German government will host its first "Invest in Germany Summit" in Berlin. Chancellor Friedrich Merz and senior members of his Cabinet will welcome a select group of high-profile international investors and business leaders. The summit is the centrepiece of a broader campaign to position Germany as an attractive destination for international capital – and a signal of how seriously Berlin is taking the competition for global investment.

With Nvidia and BlackRock already confirmed among the participants, the summit promises to be small enough to be exclusive and large enough to matter. More participant names may become public, but senior representatives from global private equity firms, multi-asset funds, and institutional investors as well as senior executives from multinational companies across future-facing sectors such as industrial AI, semiconductors, infrastructure, energy, defence, mining, space, and deep tech are expected.

Where investments and politics meet

The summit comes at a moment when the government is under political pressure to show that its growth agenda is more than rhetoric. The summit is modelled on France's "Choose France" initiative, an annual gathering at Versailles that has become a fixture for courting global capital. The German summit will draw on the French model while adapting the format to its own objectives and investment priorities. As the government's Special Representative for Investments and former CEO of Commerzbank, Martin Blessing, put it, the aim is not "speeches on stages" but matching the right counterparts with concrete projects.

That ambition sits within a wider narrative the government has been building under the banner "Germany 2030: Investing in Europe's growth story", built around Germany’s infrastructure and defence spending programme, a corporate tax cut, pension reform, and lower energy costs through reduced network charges. The summit is intended to translate that narrative into signed commitments by companies and investors, and to demonstrate to a global audience that Germany is serious about its vision as an attractive place to invest.

A mix of formats

Rather than a conventional conference agenda, the summit is built around an interplay of three formats running in parallel throughout the day. A short opening and closing plenary bookends the programme and gives the Chancellor and his Cabinet the stage to set out the government's pitch directly.

Around this, the day is structured to allow one-to-one time: multiple rounds of bilateral meetings between government representatives and individual investors run alongside a series of thematic deep-dive sessions, each hosted by a Cabinet minister and the government's Special Representative for Investments.

The political messages around the deep dives

Each of the seven announced deep-dive sessions reflects a policy priority the current government is particularly keen to put in front of an international audience.

• The Industrial AI & Semiconductors (hosted by the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Katherina Reiche) session will aim to position Germany in the global race for AI infrastructure and chip capacity, an area the government sees as decisive for future industrial competitiveness.
• The topic of Core Infrastructure (hosted by the Federal Minister of Transport, Steffen Bilger) is expected to focus on the government's infrastructure spending programme and its push, including through recent planning and permitting reform, to accelerate transport (road, rail and in-land waterways), energy and digital projects and open them up to private capital (read our article).
• Geopolitics & Security (hosted by the Special Representative for Investments, Martin Blessing) will likely reflect the heightened attention to resilience amid a more volatile security environment through investment opportunities in defence as well as in dual-use technology and the defence-adjacent industry.
• Finance & Investments (hosted by the Vice Chancellor and Federal Minister of Finance, Lars Klingbeil) is expected to showcase the fiscal firepower behind the government's agenda and provide an opportunity to discuss the regulatory framework for investments in Germany, including around private public partnerships and mobilising private capital.
• Energy & Electrification (also hosted by the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Katherina Reiche) will likely address the build-out of renewables and energy infrastructure, including grid modernisation and lowering energy costs as both a climate and an industrial competitiveness story. Read how Germany braces for the boom in our Inside Infrastructure blog post series article.
• Digitalisation & State Modernisation (hosted by the Federal Minister for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation, Karsten Wildberger) will reflect the government's push to digitalise public administration and permitting processes, seen as essential to making Germany faster to invest in.
• Innovation, Deeptech & Space (hosted by the Federal Minister of Research, Technology and Space, Dorothee Bär) will cover emerging technologies from deep-tech to space, an area the government is promoting as core to Germany's long-term competitiveness.

What's next

Over the coming weeks, we will take a closer look at these deep-dive themes, examining the regulatory and policy context behind them and what they could mean for investors considering Germany.

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